The Network Powering the Large Hadron Collider

It takes a robust network to handle the 15 petabytes of data a year that will be generated by the Large Hadron Collider particle physics project at CERN, That huge trove of data won’t be sitting still, either, and will be distributed to 7,000 scientists around the globe. “We’re moving an awful lot of data, from storage to CPU, and from CERN to other institutions around the world,” says David Foster, Network Group Leader at CERN. In this video, CERN technologists discuss the network’s requirements and the role played by Force 10, which supplies the TeraScale E-Series switches that connect 6,000 processors and 2,000 storage devices. The TeraScale supports 672 line-rate Gigabit and 56 line-rate 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports per system, allowing CERN to deploy fewer systems and simplify the architecture of its network.

About the Author

Rich Miller is the founder and editor at large of Data Center Knowledge, and has been reporting on the data center sector since 2000. He has tracked the growing impact of high-density computing on the power and cooling of data centers, and the resulting push for improved energy efficiency in these facilities.